This was a great read! I liked the structure as well, which allowed me to jump across sections before deciding to read the whole thing.
I got into meditation a few years ago and recently did a Vipassana 10 day retreat. I guess it’s hard to quantify systematic change but it is interesting to imagine what would happen if meditation was taught in schools—though I prefer it in non-spiritual form, just pure practice.
I’m still mostly a beginner in EA, so I am not sure if I’m qualified yet to judge your views on longtermism but it seems to make sense to me.
Regarding the book—perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing that it is more geared towards a “popular audience”. It is too easy to aim too high, and that perhaps makes much of EA writing somewhat impenetrable to many people who aren’t yet onboard.
Yes, I agree teaching meditation in schools could be a very good idea, I think the tools are very powerful. Apparently Robert Wright Who wrote the excellent book “why Buddhism is true“ among other books, has started a project called the apocalypse aversion project which he talked about with Rob Wiblin on an episode of 80,000 hours, One of the main ideas being that if we systematically encourage mindfulness practice we could broadly reduce existential risk.
I think you’re right, EA can be a bit inscrutable and there are definitely some benefits to being appealing to a wider popular audience, though there may also be downsides to not focusing on the EA audience
This was a great read! I liked the structure as well, which allowed me to jump across sections before deciding to read the whole thing.
I got into meditation a few years ago and recently did a Vipassana 10 day retreat. I guess it’s hard to quantify systematic change but it is interesting to imagine what would happen if meditation was taught in schools—though I prefer it in non-spiritual form, just pure practice.
I’m still mostly a beginner in EA, so I am not sure if I’m qualified yet to judge your views on longtermism but it seems to make sense to me.
Regarding the book—perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing that it is more geared towards a “popular audience”. It is too easy to aim too high, and that perhaps makes much of EA writing somewhat impenetrable to many people who aren’t yet onboard.
Thank you!
Yes, I agree teaching meditation in schools could be a very good idea, I think the tools are very powerful. Apparently Robert Wright Who wrote the excellent book “why Buddhism is true“ among other books, has started a project called the apocalypse aversion project which he talked about with Rob Wiblin on an episode of 80,000 hours, One of the main ideas being that if we systematically encourage mindfulness practice we could broadly reduce existential risk.
I think you’re right, EA can be a bit inscrutable and there are definitely some benefits to being appealing to a wider popular audience, though there may also be downsides to not focusing on the EA audience